In today's computer age, computers and computer peripherals are often internetworked over a communication network. The various devices in the communication network, including the computers, computer peripherals, and various other networking devices, are typically assigned addresses. These addresses are used for communications between the various devices.
In order to operate in the communication network, the various network devices need to obtain and maintain certain types of addressing information. Although some addressing information may be obtained from the other network devices using various communication protocols, and other addressing information may be “learned” through normal operation of the network device, it is common for some addressing information to be configured manually. In any case, it is common for certain addressing information to be stored within each network device.
In a large communication network having many network devices, the amount of addressing information that must be obtained and maintained by the various network devices is often substantial. The large amount of addressing information makes manual configuration of addressing information tedious and error-prone. The large amount of addressing information may require large amounts of memory for storage, and may also have performance implications such as increasing address search times in various address translation and routing tables.